


It's Like That

by chaosmanor



Category: Dogma (1999)
Genre: M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:38:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmanor/pseuds/chaosmanor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki and Bartleby are just trying to earn enough to keep themselves in the air.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Like That

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophiahelix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix/gifts).



> Story title and the line that Loki sings in the fic are from "It's Like That", written by Darryl McDaniels, Joseph Simmons and Jason Mizell.

In the summer warmth, the rolling lush lawns and pristine garden beds of the campus were blissfully empty of students.

"Four weeks," Bartleby said, kicking at a pebble on the path, and bouncing the pebble off an over-hanging light fitting. "Four weeks, and the little shits will have covered this place with hamburger wrappers and beer cans."

Loki hummed under his breath beside Bartleby. "So? Like you care about the aesthetic qualities of this fine academic institution."

Bartleby drank from his mug and spat a mouthful of coffee sideways onto the path. 

"Guess not," he said. "Long as this fine academic institution keeps on paying us to turn up, so we can keep the utilities on through another fucking Wisconsin winter."

"At least we have utilities now," Loki said. 

The dark early years before urbanization crept out to Wisconsin weren't something they often talked about, but Loki was very, very grateful for electricity, central heating and the Extreme Sports channel on cable. 

Their house on Redemption Avenue was adequate, but it didn't have a functioning wind tunnel yet. Loki would probably also keep on turning up and lecturing and grading papers if it meant he got to eventually own a wind tunnel. 

Bartleby spat again, tipped the rest of his coffee over a rose bush, and pushed open the door to the Department of Divinity.

"Thumb-wrestle you at lunch," Bartleby said. "Loser has to teach Ancient Hebrew."

"Fuck you," Loki said. "You're on."

The faculty room in the department was crowded with professors, TAs, grad students who wanted to be TAs, and the untenured flotsam like themselves all scrambling for chairs or perching on top of the low bookshelves around the edge of the room.

Loki stole a chair from a TA with the power of his fiercest glare and Bartleby slung himself partly over the back of Loki's chair and partly over the bookcase behind.

Carla, who taught the Episcopalian Preparation For Ministry units, smiled fondly at Loki and Bartleby from across the table and pushed a plate of cookies closer to Loki.

"Good to see you boys back again," Carla said, and Loki would have sworn she twinkled at him with affection. "The department just wouldn't be the same without you both."

At the top of the table, the new department head, an angular woman with too much hair in too many places, banged a pile of papers on the table. Coffee mugs and plates of sandwiches shook.

"Thank you, thank you all," the angular head said. "I'm Professor Jane Deeping, and Dean Finnigan has appointed me to lead the overhaul of the curriculum of the Department of Divinity, as requested by the Board of Trustees for this college. As you will all know from the briefing paper circulated last week, the Trustees feel that the Department has not moved forward with the times, and that the teaching focus has remained, well, too religious."

"Professor Deeping, with all due respect to our excellent Trustees, this is a Department of Divinity," Carla pointed out. "Religion is what we do."

Behind Loki, Bartleby muttered, "Department of Fucking Divinity," and the TA beside Loki mumbled, "Too fucking right."

"The briefing paper, Carol, um, Carla," Professor Deeping said. "New religions, a broader embrace of metaphysics, welcoming more students into our classes. Here are the revised units for this semester. Let's talk about who will be teaching them."

"Is it ten o'clock yet? Is it ten o'clock yet?" Bartleby whispered behind Loki, reaching for a copy of the units as they was handed around.

"No," Loki said, smacking Bartleby's hand aside, then passing the paper to him.

A nosy TA had once realized that Bartleby could spend nine hours in his office grading papers without having to piss. The TA had reported Bartleby for urinating out of his office window as the only possible explanation. After that, Loki and Bartleby had organized a pretend urination schedule for the working day, involving believably frequent trips to the restroom, for believably long visits. It was easier to go together, and less boring. Their first restroom visit for the day was scheduled for ten.

Loki secretly looked forward to the urination breaks. If Bartleby was in a good mood, there might be a cuddle. Of course, if Bartleby was in a bad mood, they might fight over whose turn it was to pay the cable bill, but that had its charm as well.

Beside Loki, the TA disbelievingly said, "What?" at the list of units, so Loki focused on the list instead of imaginary pissing.

Bartleby's specialty, _An Investigation of the Old Testament_ , was still listed, but Loki's _The History of Heaven_ was gone, and Adjunct Instructor Lokke now appeared to be teaching _Connecting with Angels and Saints_ , and _Releasing Guilt Through Forgiveness_. Bartleby had acquired _New Religious Movements_.

Over the clamor of voices in the room, Bartleby called out, "What, please, is a New Religious Movement?"

"Aliens," Professor Deeping called back. "Aliens coming to Earth to save us."

Bartleby groaned, and Loki leaned back and looked up at him. 

"Could be worse, you could be teaching one of the atheistic units," Loki pointed out. "At least this way you don't have to spend your working day denying the existence of the Almighty."

"Can you, as a Catholic, teach about Alien Religions?" the TA beside Loki asked Bartleby.

"Not a Catholic anymore," Bartleby said. "God threw me out."

Loki sympathetically patted the bit of Bartleby he could reach, which was Bartleby's knee, and the TA said "Oooh," with the tone of comprehension usually heard from a student who had worked out that the Friday assignment box wasn't cleared until Monday morning.

Loki had no idea what the TA thought she had understood, but he was often bewildered by humans and their responses to everything from insects to transubstantiation. Some of them were even afraid of flying, for fuck's sake.

"No Ancient Greek or Hebrew?" Loki asked. "Those are essential units for students who go on to seminary colleges, or really, for anyone who wants to read anything that's not a four hundred year old English translation of the Bible that has as much to do with Puritan politics in England at the time as it does with what actually happened."

A low Episcopalian hiss ran around the room, and Loki said, "What?"

"Hebrew, Greek and Latin are now being taught by the Languages Department, in Liberal Arts," Professor Deeping said. "Mr. Lokke has a valid point of view. This department is too dependent on texts from the past. We are revisiting our reading lists, and freshening up the material."

"Point of clarification," Bartleby said. "My esteemed Old Testament colleague, Mr. Loki, was arguing for using an older translation, like, oh, the Lindisfarne Gospels by Aldred, I suspect."

Loki sighed. It had all been going so well. They had been going to sort out their teaching schedules for the semester, make sure they still had offices next to each other, then go home to watch Extreme Kitesurfing World Championships on cable and confirm their plans to hitchhike to AirVenture at OshKosh on the weekend.

Instead, they were going to end up unemployed again. This time, it was Bartleby's turn to be a podium dancer, and Loki could have a fun job, like teaching people without wings to hang glide or jump out of planes.

Professor Deeping chuckled, and said, "Ah yes, Bartleby and Lokke. Our resident displaced Catholic scholars. Thank you both for your charming opinions. My office, after the meeting."

Loki nodded, and Bartleby whispered, "But what about going to the restroom? We still have to go urinate," in Loki's ear.

The TA beside Loki choked on her cookie, and Loki patted her back sympathetically.

The meeting was an extended intellectual brawl, but Loki had incited worse in the past, and at least this time it wasn't his fault and God didn't intervene. Loki acquired _Reincarnation: Fact or Fiction?_ and Bartleby didn't duck fast enough when _Extrasensory Self-Defense_ was thrown at their end of the table. Leaving wasn't an option, not until all of the teaching roles were filled, just in case something particularly dire like _Creating An Ethical Spiritual Congregation_ was assigned to one of them in their absence. 

Once the last unit was allocated (Carla was the lucky winner of _Creating An Ethical Spiritual Congregation_ ), the cookies were being demolished, and the whining had begun, Bartleby leaned forward against Loki.

"Can we go now? Can we go now?" Bartleby asked. "It's ten forty-five."

"Sure," Loki said, standing up and remembering to smile cheerily at his fellow academics. "See you all next time!"

He followed Bartleby out of the staffroom, and as the door swung shut behind him, he could hear Carla saying, "Such nice boys. It must be so difficult to be devout Catholics for boys in their position."

The restroom was pleasingly empty, so Loki sat on the counter beside the hand basin, keeping track of the second hand of his watch, while Bartleby hummed around the restroom making airplane noises, with accompanying extended arm motions.

"AirVenture!" Bartleby said, as he buzzed past Loki. "This weekend! Which bit are you looking forward to the most! BzzzzzzBzzzzzzz."

"Ninety seconds," Loki said. "The flight we have booked on that restored Lancaster Bomber. You?"

"The aerobatics display," Bartleby said, banking tightly with his arms in the confined space of the restroom. 

"And the daily fly pasts," Loki added. "The way the A-10 jets sound, overhead…"

Bartleby grabbed Loki's sweater vest, yanking him close, then shoved a hand underneath the back of Loki's shirt and scratched nails across the raw skin covering Loki's wing buds.

"Gonna be so fucking good," Bartleby mouthed against Loki's ear, as the restroom door swung open.

"Mr. Lokke, Mr. Bartleby, good morning," said one of the grad students, on his way to a cubicle.

"Good morning, Clive," Loki called out, squirming off the counter and away from Bartleby. "Hands," he hissed at Bartleby, nudging the faucet on.

In the hallway outside the restroom, Bartleby started laughing.

Loki followed him down the hallway, towards the Head of Department's office, singing, "Next time someone's teaching, why don't you get taught!"

Professor Deeping smiled angularly at the pair of them from across her desk a minute later.

"Thank you for dropping in, Mr. Lokke and Mr. Bartleby. I've had a glance at your staff files. Very interesting…"

Professor Deeping tapped the paperwork on her desk.

"It seems that neither of you are on a tenure track?"

"We're more interested in teaching," Loki said.

"Ah yes, I can see here you both use unusual pedagogical methodology in your Old Testament classes, and teach from an imagined autobiographical narrative perspective. Innovative?"

"Fresh," Bartleby said. "The Old Testament isn't a stale historical or theological document. It's a lived experience."

Deeping smiled, too quickly for Loki to count her canines, though it looked like she had far too many.

"Different," Deeping agreed. "I'll be watching both of you with interest this semester. I hope you both adapt to the new curriculum successfully."

In the main cafeteria on campus, Loki sat opposite Bartleby, a Coke and an empty cup between them.

"New jobs?" Loki asked. "Deeping is actively evil."

Bartleby shrugged. "I agree she's evil. We're the local experts in identifying malicious and malevolent beings, and she's one. Is it worth giving up a perfectly adequate job that pays well, has no heavy lifting and is indoors, just because of a bad human? I don't think so."

Loki sipped and spat, and glared at Bartleby. "You're just saying that because it's your turn to take the rubbishy job."

Bartleby grinned at Loki. "Yep. And because I think this might be the semester we finally persuade the Aerodynamics Research Team to give us after hours access to their wind tunnel."

"Really?" Loki asked, grabbing Bartleby's hands on the table. "Really?"

The smugness exuding from Bartleby was significant.

"Let's go home," Bartleby said. "And watch Extreme Kitesurfing on cable."

The skin on Loki's back, where Bartleby had scratched, tingled and buzzed. "Yeah," Loki said. "Let's."

On their way across the lawn outside the cafeteria, a staff member from another faculty bustled up to them, calling out, "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!"

"Do we know her?" Bartleby murmured out of the side of his mouth.

"Lassiter. Gender Studies," Loki muttered back, then said, "Professor Lassiter, nice to see you again."

"Mr. Lokke, Mr. Bartleby, just the people I was hoping to catch. I was wondering if one of you would be interested in giving a guest lecture for me this semester?"

Bartleby's face was neutral, and Loki kept his smile indifferent. "What topic?"

"I'd like someone from the Department of Divinity to lecture on God Is A Woman," Lassiter said.

"Sure," Bartleby said. "I'll do that. It will take thirty seconds, and will consist of me saying 'Of course God is a woman, go home all of you lost souls and do some real work'."

Lassiter stared at Bartleby in disbelief, then turned to Loki. "Mr. Lokke?"

"God is a woman," Loki agreed. "It's obvious to any of us who have met her. It's going to be a short lecture. Do you want to rethink this?"

Lassiter nodded, and Loki and Bartleby left her standing forlornly on the lawn, presumably trying to work out what had happened.

"I think she wanted an argument," Bartleby said, when they reached the bus stop.

"Wrong people, wrong topic," Loki said, holding his hand out to signal the approaching bus.

The Extreme Kitesurfing World Championships hadn't started when they got home, which made Bartleby whoop with happiness.

"Get the drapes!" Bartleby called over his shoulder. "I'll get the beer and lock the doors!"

Loki tossed his messenger bag in the hallway and ran for the living room drapes, flicking on the huge TV on his way past.

"Remote control?" Bartleby asked, balancing a row of beer cans on the mantelpiece over the fireplace and putting a clean bucket underneath.

Bartleby caught the remote control that Loki tossed him, and ran to check the front and back doors of their house and ran back into the living room, peeling his clothes off on the way.

Loki's sweater vest, shirt and chinos were in the corner of the room already, and he checked his clearance and the drapes, and stretched his wings out as far as their home's twelve foot ceiling would allow.

"Let's do this!" Loki crowed. He grabbed a can of beer, gulping down as much as his mouth would hold, and then spitting.

The TV screen stopped showing promotional material for stupid shows about people being submerged in stupid water, and switched to the opening credits for Extreme Kitesurfing, with people launching themselves through the glorious open air. Loki and Bartleby shouted in delight, flying at each other, chest to chest, in a messy clash of feathers and breastplates, and it was fucking on!

Every exultant soaring leap, each attempt at free flight on the screen, made Loki shout with joy, his wings aching in sympathetic pleasure. He wrestled with Bartleby, bruising clashes of wings and hands, until he trembled and shook from exertion and exhaustion and the regained sensation of throwing himself through the air for eternity.

Bartleby went down first, hitting the floor with folded wings and shaking body, rocking the house on its foundations. Loki dropped over the top of him, grabbing Bartleby's arms and pinning him to the floor, half-watching Bartleby's face twist as Bartleby grunted, half-watching the TV screen where someone was flying free against a clear blue sky.

The feelings smashed into Loki, collapsing his wings, slamming him down into Bartleby, so he couldn't move until Bartleby rolled him off and onto the rough carpet.

"Beer?" Bartleby asked. "And a bucket?"

"Fuck, yeah," Loki said. "And the remote control, to change the channel for a bit."

"Yeah, yeah," Bartleby said, squatting down beside Loki with a beer in his hand. "We can watch cartoons, as long as everyone stays on the ground."

 

At the AirVenture Air Show in OshKosh, Loki and Bartleby stood on the edge of the flightline, arms around each other. Each jet that roared overhead made them shout with happiness. Each swooping aerobatics act had them jumping wildly, arms over their heads, in a way that probably really annoyed the airshow attendees unfortunate enough to be crowded on the flightline near them. 

The Warbirds Spectacular, the highlight of the final two days of the airshow when gleamingly restored fighter planes swooped over the flightline, coordinated with simulated bombing runs, had Loki gasping and hanging on to Bartleby in an attempt to stay upright.

In between pyrotechnics, while the propellers and jets were a dull hum in the distance as the next fly past was prepared, the woman standing next to Loki wiped her soda off her chest and observed, "You boys sure are excitable about flying, aren't you?"

Loki, who was biting Bartleby's shoulder, couldn't answer. Bartleby, who was either further ahead or way behind Loki, said, "Lady, when those planes go over, we don't care that we don't have God anymore. This is more than enough."

The woman toasted Bartleby with the soda that Loki hadn't managed to spill from her can. "Amen to that, boys, amen to that."

**Author's Note:**

> The things I know nothing about include religious studies, US academic and college structures, extreme sports and airshows.


End file.
